Cripplegate
¶Location
Cripplegate was one of the original gates in the
city wall (Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 221; Harben). It was the northern gate of a large fortress that occupied the
northwestern corner of the Roman city, a site that has been well studied by
post–Word War II archaeologists (Howe and
Lakin 25-47). It was in use as a gate again by the eleventh century
(Howe and Lakin 100). In early
modern London, it continued to serve as one of the major northern egress points,
leading to Bunhill Field, Grub Street, and Whitecross Street. The
gate stood at the north end of Little Wood Street
(Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 221), on a direct
route from Cheapside Street via Wood Street. Cripplegate Ward spanned
the wall, with the gate marking a spatial (though
not political) boundary between the inner and outer halves of the ward. Clearly
visible on the Agas map, where it is labelled
Creplegate,the gate opened onto an open area where local residents gathered to collect their water from the Cripplegate Conduit (Prockter and Taylor 8). Nearby landmarks included St. Giles, Cripplegate and a number of livery company halls: Bowyers’ Hall, Barbers’ Hall, Carriers’ Hall, Plasterers’ Hall, and the Brewers’ Hall are all known to have been in this area (Prockter and Taylor 8; Howe and Lakin 95, 79).
¶Name and Etymology
The name of the gate has been variously spelled since the tenth century as
Cripelesgate, Ciryclegate, Cirpilegate, or Crepelesgate; later forms of the name include Crepelegate, Cruppelgate, and Crepelgate
(Harben; Ekwall 36). The etymology of the gate’s name
remains uncertain. The name might derive from either the presence of cripples
begging there (Howe and Lakin 60) or
from the Anglo-Saxon word crepel meaning a tunnel or an underground
passage (Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 221). In his
Survey, Stow describes a popular legend that links the gate with cripples:
The next is the Posterne of Cripplegate, so called long before the Conquest. For I reade in the historie of Edmond king of the East Angles, written by Abbo Floriacensis , and by Burchard somtime Secretarie to Offa king of Marcia, but since by Iohn Lidgate Monke of Bery, that in the yeare 1010 . the Danes spoiling the kingdome of the East Angles, Alwyne Bishoppe of Helmeham , caused the body of king Edmond the Martyre to bee brought from Bedrisworth, (now called Bury Saint Edmondes,) through the kingdome of the East Saxons, and so to London in at Cripplegate , a place sayeth mine Author so called of Criples begging there: at which gate, (it was said) the body entering, miracles were wrought, as some of the Lame to goe vpright, praysing God. (Stow)
This gate’s proximity to the parish church of St. Giles, Cripplegate may confirm this association; the church was
built in 1090 in the name of St. Giles, the patron
saint of beggars and cripples.
(Stow; Harben)
A circa 1750 engraving depicting cripples at the gate can be
seen on Collage (See also Chalfant
6 on the etymology of the gate’s name and its possible connection to
beggars).
Harben offers an alternative to this story, drawing from the comments of a Mr.
Denton in the records of St. Giles, Cripplegate. Denton questions the etymology of Cripplegate as deriving from cripples having begged
there, because this practice would have had to occur for a considerable length
of time in order for the name to attach itself to the gate, and the gate was
never known by any other name. In addition, cripples did not beg at Cripplegate any more than they did at the other
gates. Instead, Denton suggests that Cripplegate
and the Barbican were joined by a tunnel providing
a covered way,between these two walls. The Anglo-Saxon word for such a fortification was crepel (meaning
burrow) (Harben). Both Bebbington and Smith take this position on the gate’s name (Bebbington 103; Smith 55), while the more reliable London Encyclopoedia merely acknowledges the possibility (Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 221). Smith suggests that sentries crept along this tunnel to take up their positions in bastions (55; see also the St. Giles, Cripplegate website).
¶Significance
Like all of the city gates, Cripplegate was a
guarded fortress affording passage in and out of the city. In his Survey, Stow refers to this gate as a postern (Stow),
a means of entrance or exit: placed at the back or side; secondary, lesser, private, hidden; esp. in postern door, postern gate(OED postern, adj.1.). While this definition implies that Cripplegate may have been one of the city’s smaller gates at the time Stow was writing, it appears from the record left in Samuel Pepys’ diary that the gate witnessed heavy traffic from those wanting to leave the city for the suburbs in the later seventeenth century. On Wednesday, 21 June 1665, Pepys writes:
So homewards, and to the Cross Keys at Cripplegate, where I find all the town almost going out of town, the coaches and wagons being all full of people going into the country. (6.133)
While Pepys does not state where these travellers were headed, it is possible
that they were journeying toward Islington, a
suburb just northwest of Cripplegate which was a
popular destination for Londoners’ outings (Dekker 191 n.52).
Apart from its role as a fortification, Cripplegate
took on other functions. Stow writes that it was sometimes used as a prison
(Stow), a practice that Weinreb,
Hibbert, Keay, and Keay date to the fourteenth century (212). Like London
Bridge, Cripplegate was used to display
the bodies of traitors. One such body was that of William
Thomas, clerk of the privy council to Edward
VI. After his execution in 1554 for his
involvement in the Wyatt
rebellion,
his body was hung over Cripplegate and his head
displayed on London Bridge (Hamilton). Henry Machyn records that Thomas
was hanged and after his head struck off and then quartered. And the morrow after his head was set on London Bridge and three quarters set over Cripplegate(Machyn 1554-05-18).
Monarchical figures have passed through Cripplegate, or at least attempted
to. On 28 November 1558,
Queen Elizabeth entered the city at Cripplegate (Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 212). Henry Machyn records that
Her grace rod thrugh barbecan & crepulgat(Machyn 1558-11-28). In 1461, during the Wars of the Roses, Lancastrians Henry VI and Queen Margaret arrived at Cripplegate following their defeat of Warwick the Kingmaker at the battle of St. Albans. Pro-Yorkist citizens promised to provide them with food as long as their entourage kept out of the city, yet Henry and his consort, with their troops, were forced to retire north once news came that Edward, Earl of March, with the help of his cousin, the Earl of Warwick, had rallied Warwick’s army and was preparing to march on London at Cripplegate. A determined crowd rushed to Cripplegate to deny Henry and Margaret’s wagons access into the city. Shortly after, Edward and Warwick entered the city. Edward was to become England’s first Yorkist king as King Edward IV, although the final victory of the war went to the Lancastrians when Henry Tudor defeated the last Yorkist king, Richard III (Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 221; Kent 235). This historical event was dramatized by Thomas Heywood in 1 Edward IV . Although control of the gates is hotly contested in the play, and much of the action in scenes 2–9 occurs around the gates, only Aldgate and Bishopsgate are named.
¶History
The gate was rebuilt a number of times, first in 1244 by the Brewers of London and then in 1491, after Edmond Shaw, Goldsmith and
mayor of London, left 400 marks for the reparation of the gate in
his testament (Stow). From 1336-37, pieces of wood from the Guildhall were used for its repair (Harben). In 1663, the gate was
repaired again with an added foot postern
and the following inscription:
This Gate was Repaired and Beautified, and the Foot Postern new made at the Charge of the City of London, the 15th Year of the Reign of our Sovereign Lord K. Charles the Second, and in the Maioralty of Sir John Robinson, Knt. and Baronet, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and Alderman of this Ward, Anno Dom. 1663. (Strype 1.4.18)
The rooms over this gate also served as the residence for the water bailiff of
the city, whom Strype identifies as Peter Elers at
the time he was writing during the early eighteenth century (Strype 5.8.164). It was common for rooms above the
city gates to be let out to civic officials. The gate survived the Great Fire of 1666
, although the
surrounding ward was
devastated(Howe and Lakin 95). Hollar’s 1666 map of the fire damage shows the gate looking very much as it did in Norden’s 1653 map. In 1760, the gate was taken down so the street could be widened. The materials were sold for 91 pounds to Mr. Blagden, a carpenter in Coleman Street. A fragment of the old gate temporarily remained in the yard of the White Horse Inn (Weinreb, Hibbert, Keay, and Keay 221; Harben).
A plaque now marks the site of Cripplegate in Wood Street by Fore
Street. Across the street, a City of London building named The Postern
recalls the former gate. While the gate no longer exists, sections of the wall
remain standing nearby in the Barbican complex (Ross and Clark 65).
¶Literary References
A number of literary references draw upon the connection between the gate and
cripples. In The seuen deadly sinnes of London drawne in seuen
seuerall coaches, through the seuen seuerall gates of the citie bringing the
plague with them, written in 1606, Thomas Dekker
describes the entrance of the fifth sin, Apishness, into London:
This Signior Ioculento (as the diuell would haue it) comes prawncing in at Cripplegate, and he may well doe it, for indeede all the parts hee playes are but cou’d speeches ſtolne from others, whoſe voices and actions hee counterfeſtes: but ſo lamely, that all the Cripples in tenne Spittle-houſes, ſhwe not more halting. (Dekker 30)
In The Shoemaker’s Holiday (1599), Firk mocks Rafe, his
fellow journeyman who has recently returned home lame from fighting in France.
His comment,
Thou lie with a woman—to build nothing but Cripplegates!suggests Rafe’s lameness and impotency after coming back from war (Dekker 14.72-73). In Eirenopolis, an ecclesiastical work describing London as the
City of Peace,seventeenth-century preacher and author Thomas Adams links Recompense with Cripplegate because it is a
lameway to achieve peace:
It is the lameſt way to peace, yet a way: it is a halting gate, but a gate. It were far better comming into this Citie by any of the former gates, yet better at this then none. All come not in by Innocence, nor all by Patience, nor all by Beneficence: but if they haue failed in theſe, they muſt be admitted by recompence, or not at all. (Adams sig. D10r)
These literary examples show that, whatever the origin of its name, Cripplegate was firmly associated with cripples in
the cultural imagination.
References
-
.
Eirenopolis.
The Map of Early Modern London, Edition 7.0, edited by , U of Victoria, 05 May 2022, mapoflondon.uvic.ca/edition/7.0/EIRE1.htm. -
Citation
Bebbington, Gillian. London Street Names. London: B.T. Batsford, 1972. Print.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Chalfant, Fran C. Ben Jonson’s London: A Jacobean Placename Dictionary. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1978. Print.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Dekker, Thomas. The seuen deadly sinnes of London drawne in seuen seuerall coaches, through the seuen seuerall gates of the citie bringing the plague with them. Opus septem dierum. London: E[dward] A[llde and S. Stafford] for Nathaniel Butter, 1606. STC 6522.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Dekker, Thomas. The Shoemaker’s Holiday. Ed. R.L. Smallwood and Stanley Wells. Manchester: Manchester UP, 1979. The Revels Plays.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Ekwall, Eilert. Street-Names of the City of London. Oxford: Clarendon, 1965. Print.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Hamilton, Dakota L.Thomas, William.
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. H.C.G. Matthew, Brian Harrison, Lawrence Goldman, and David Cannadine. Oxford UP. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/27242.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Harben, Henry A. A Dictionary of London. London: Herbert Jenkins, 1918. [Available digitally from British History Online: https://www.british-history.ac.uk/no-series/dictionary-of-london.]This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Hollar, Wenceslaus. A Map or Groundplott of the Citty of London, with the Suburbes Thereof so farr as the Lord Mayors Jurisdiction doeth Extend, by which is Exactly Demonstrated the Present Condition of it, since the Last Sad Accident of Fire, the Blanke Space Signifyng the Burnt Part, & where the House be those Places yet Standing. London: John Overton, 1666. [See more information about this map.]This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Howe, Elizabeth, and David Lakin. Roman and Medieval Cripplegate, City of London: Archaeological Excavations 1992–8. London: MoLA, 2004. MoLA Monograph 21. Print.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Kent, William. An Encyclopedia of London. Ed. Godfrey Thompson. Rev. ed. London: J.M. Dent, 1970. Print.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Machyn, Henry. A London Provisioner’s Chronicle, 1550–1563, by Henry Machyn: Manuscript, Transcription, and Modernization. Ed. Richard W. Bailey, Marilyn Miller, and Colette Moore. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2006. [The Map of Early Modern London cites from this edition rather than Nichols’s nineteenth-century edition. We cite by the date of the entry thus: (Machyn 1550–08–04).]This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Norden, John.London
[map.] London, 1593. Reprinted in 1653 with an index entitledA Guide for Cuntrey men In the famous Cittey of London by the help of which plot they shall be able to know how farr it is to any street. As allso to go unto the same without forder troble.
London: P. Stent, 1653. British Library.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford UP. https://www.oed.com/.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Pepys, Samuel. The Diary of Samuel Pepys: A New and Complete Transcription. Ed. Robert Latham and William Matthews. 11 vols. Berkeley : U of California P, 1970–1983.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Prockter, Adrian, and Robert Taylor, comps. The A to Z of Elizabethan London. London: Guildhall Library, 1979. Print. [This volume is our primary source for identifying and naming map locations.]This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Ross, Cathy, and John Clark. London: The Illustrated History. London: Allen Lane, 2008.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Smith, Al. Dictionary of City of London Street Names. New York: Arco, 1970. Print.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Stow, John. A Survey of London. Reprinted from the Text of 1603. Ed. Charles Lethbridge Kingsford. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon, 1908. Remediated by British History Online. [Kingsford edition, courtesy of The Centre for Metropolitan History. Articles written after 2011 cite from this searchable transcription.]This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Strype, John. A SURVEY of the CITIES of London and Westminster: CONTAINING the Original, Antiquity, Increase, Modern Estate and Government of those CITIES. London, 1720. An Electronic Edition of John Strype’s A Survey of London and Westminster. Ed. Julia Merritt. hriOnline. https://www.dhi.ac.uk/strype/transcriptions.shtml.This item is cited in the following documents:
-
Citation
Weinreb, Ben, Christopher Hibbert, Julia Keay, and John Keay. The London Encyclopaedia. 3rd ed. London: Macmillan, 2008. Print.This item is cited in the following documents: